1938 21 mile high parachute jump!!

[dterrick 0]

Yup, as printed in Popular Science in that month.

Our family has a collection of Pop Sci and Pop Mech. magazines dating from the 30's to the 60's and something I saw in the history forum made me go look (No I don't have the 1934 issue). Believe me I'll be combing these issues for more cool stuff.

What I've found so far is this article describing the planned antics of one J.J. Dunkel and it is eerily similar to Michael Fournier's plans. Printed on a cool sepia toned paper that can only be replicated by 65 years of aging, I've scanned the article in TIFF format and extracted the text.

I'd love to share it with the forum but I seem unable to convert TIFF format and each page is far too large (nearly 3 MB) for attachments.

I've attached the text in MS word format. Perhaps a greenie or a techie can direct me to a suitable place to display this rare glimpse into our history?

Dave

Life is very short and there's no time for fussing and fighting my friend (Lennon/McCartney)

Twenty one mile parachute leap - Aug 1938 PS.doc

[hookitt 0]

WOW!!! cool article. Thanks man

My grammar sometimes resembles that of magnetic refrigerator poetry... Ghetto

[AggieDave 6]

Dude, drop them in a ZIP file and e-mail them to me, I'll square them away for ya. If anything, I can size them down enough to post somewhere else, but still have them able to read.

[email protected]

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[newshooter12 0]

try dipping some paper in light colored tea and letting it dry.... a friend made some new paper look old that way a few times.

[blewaway5 0]

That's an awesome find. Thanks for sharing it!

Truman Sparks for President

[dterrick 0]

BEER webpage!

So I've been siting on this webspace and finally decided to tryand post something.

I started out with the cover of the 1938 Pop Sci as well as a little texty blurb (for the whuffos, of course) that can be found at

http://www.members.shaw.ca/dterrick/

It's the only page there so don't look any deeper (there's nothing there). ...Soon the article

Dave

Life is very short and there's no time for fussing and fighting my friend (Lennon/McCartney)

[Derekbox 0]

Or we can take the text and paste it right about here:

ONE OF the most daring and fantastic stunts ever attempted—a twenty-one-mile parachute leap—is now being planned by a Cleveland, Ohio, dare-devil. Using a bomb-shaped gondola and stratosphere balloon of his own design, he hopes to rise to the top of the sky. At 110,000 feet, he will cut the balloon free and plummet toward the earth in his streamline metal cabin, speeding downward for more than 80,000 feet before releasing a parachute built into the gondola’s tail.
The airman who plans this thrilling journey is no amateur sky rider. He is no crackpot, unaware of the dangers and difficulties in the way. He is Joseph J. Dunkel—the man who has made more parachute jumps than any other person in the world.
At the age of forty-one, this veteran has piled up a record of nearly 1,300 jumps. His longest drop was 28,800 feet; his shortest 250 feet. Once, he bailed out at 18,000 feet and plunged 16,500 before he jerked the rip cord. Another time, he hit the air going 300 miles an hour, leaving a plane in the middle of a power dive.
When he goes into the stratosphere, he will have two goals in sight. During the ascent, he will try to reach the greatest height ever attained by man. And, during the descent, he will seek to reach the greatest speed ever experienced by a human. To achieve these goals, Dunkel has been working on the plans of a radically new type of stratosphere craft.
The bag of the balloon has been de signed so it will be impossible for the neck to freeze shut and cause the balloon to burst in the frigid, rarefied air at the peak of its ascent. Another innovation is said to prevent dilution of the hydrogen gas. Lifted by this great gas container, Dunkel expects to penetrate the upper reaches of the sky to a height of nearly twenty-one miles. The present altitude record for stratosphere balloons is approximately fourteen miles.
This long ascent, however, will be only the preliminary to the real drama of the trip. High above the earth, Dunkel will jerk a cord, cutting loose the gondola and at the same time rip ping open the gas bag, which will deflate itself and float to earth supported by a parachute. In the meantime, the streamline gondola will plummet down ward like an arrow, held on its course by fins at the rear. It will be traveling, Dunkel calculates, 2,000 miles an hour before it reaches denser atmosphere.
To withstand tremendous strains, the man-carrying meteor is to have a framework of steel tubing covered with sheets of super-strong alloy. An inner chamber of aluminum, an upright cylinder slung on special shock absorbers to eliminate unnecessary jars, will hold the standing passenger and scientific instruments. Should Dunkel lose consciousness and slump down in the cylinder, during the terrific plunge to earth, the act will automatically release the parachute at the tail of the gondola. This thirty-two-foot ‘chute is de signed to land the metal car at a speed of less than twenty miles an hour.
If all goes well, Dunkel plans to cut loose from the balloon at 110,000 feet, then wait until he is 30,000 feet above the earth before releasing the tail parachute. At 5,000 feet he will open a trapdoor in the nose of the gondola and drop out to descend, by means of a small pack parachute, to the ground.
The cost of constructing the stratosphere craft and of making the flight would be in the neighborhood of $100, 000, he estimates. However, he believes, the scientific data on stresses and strains at meteoric speeds, which the flight would show, would be of in calculable value in designing high- flying speed planes of the future.
If Dunkel succeeds in making this spectacular ride to earth, it will climax a career of danger and daring which began when he was less than fourteen years old. For, literally, Dunkel has been on the jump all his life. As a youngster, he was fascinated by the hot-air balloon exhibitions at Cleveland amusement parks. His heroes were the aeronauts who rode these frail craft aloft to cut loose and float back to earth under umbrellas of silk. A few weeks before his fourteenth birthday, he got permission from one of the balloonists to go up and parachute back.
That first leap was the beginning of a lifetime of thrilling activity. It wasn’t long until young Dunkel was building his own hot-air balloons and parachutes. His mother helped him cut out and sew his first outfit. Al though Dunkel began using parachutes about 1913, he never bought one ready- made until 1926.
THOSE early parachutes used with the hot-air balloons were of the attached type. They opened at the instant the balloonist abandoned his craft. After Dunkel graduated from balloons to air planes, he still used the attached ‘chute.
Along about 1919, Dunkel got the idea that he could jump from a plane, fall through space for a while, then open his parachute. So he went to work and constructed a crude pack. He tied the folded ‘chute with grocery string, went aloft, and jumped out. He broke the string with his hands, and pushed the parachute out until the wind caught it, and it opened. He made about twenty such jumps, until one day the silken folds refused to open as they should. By frantic effort and considerable luck, he got the ‘chute open just before he reached the ground. Thereupon he abandoned the grocery-string pack, and waited for something more reliable to come along.
At that time, various parachute makers, jumpers, and inventors were experimenting with free types of packs, which could be released at any time after jumping. Dunkel remembers the device originated by a Japanese, which was a modified jack-in-the-box. The parachute was literally shot out of a wooden container by powerful steel springs. Another man had an arrangement of steel wires and canvas that could be set, somewhat like a trap, to shoot the parachute into the air. This worked all right until the jumper’s body got in the way of the catapulted ‘chute. Finally, Floyd Smith and Leslie Irving, working for the Government, developed a successful pack-type parachute. At first this was produced only for military use, and it was not until 1926 that Dunkel could get one.
F OR a number of years, Dunkel worked with designers and manufacturers in an effort to perfect parachutes. He was, and still is, a parachute salesman. During his most active period, he made as many as ten leaps in an afternoon, to show prospective purchasers how his wares worked. In St. Louis, he demonstrated the quick- opening features of a certain parachute by leaping from a plane only 250 feet above the ground. As the ship was in a power dive at the time, he left it at a speed of more than 200 miles an hour, sufficient to snap the parachute open instantly. Such a stunt would have been foolhardy with one of his early balloon- type models, Dunkel says. These were made of pure Japanese silk, and were inclined to split easily.
During all of his twenty-eight years of plunging through space, Dunkel has never been seriously injured. He has lost a few square inches of skin, but he has never broken a bone. He is proud of that record. But he is even more proud of the fact that, as a parachute instructor, he has dropped more than 1,000 novices into space without a single fatality.
D URING the 1932 National Air Races at Cleveland, Dunkel and a pilot took Marie McMillen to a height of 24,800 feet and Dunkel helped her get out of the plane, to drop to earth and establish a world’s altitude record for women jumpers. He helped Miss Mc Millen train for this and other spectacular leaps.
His job as Chief of Parachute Participation at the National Air Races makes it necessary for him to super vise preparations for as many as sixty jumps a day. All the equipment used by the various jumpers must go through his hands and receive his approval be fore it can be used.
For many years, Dunkel has been collecting parachutes as a hobby. Stored away in his Cleveland home, he has fifty-six different kinds, representing virtually every type that has been used in America. Study of these parachutes, plus his years of jumping from the sky, has provided the groundwork for Dunkel’s sensational proposal for a plunge from the stratosphere.

[konradptr 0]

Am I the only one that thinks it is funny that when the article was written, he had more jumps than anyone else in history, at 1,300 jumps? I guess we need to thank ram-air canopies, turbine aircraft, etc...

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Getting banned isn't that bad......

[QuickDraw 0]

Just thought i would add this.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3057197.stm

-- Hope you don't die. --

I'm fucking winning

[Blahr 0]

This too.

I guess Cheryl Stearns will be attempting a jump from

130,000 ft

http://www.stratoquest.com/default.cfm?page=25

[chuteless 1]

what ever happened to that guy. There must be some records of his jumping activities in the Cleveland area. Has anyone ever heard of him and how he finished up both his project, and his life?

[Casie 0]

Pretty interesting.....thanx for sharing!

~Porn Kitty
WARNING: Goldschlager causes extreme emotional outbursts!